HOMO SAPIENS is a film about the finiteness and fragility of human existence and the end of the industrial age, and what it means to be a human being.

What will remain of our lives after we're gone? Empty spaces, ruins, cities increasingly overgrown with vegetation, crumbling asphalt: the areas we currently inhabit, though humanity has disappeared. Now abandoned and decaying, gradually reclaimed by nature after being taken from it so long ago. HOMO SAPIENS is an ode to humanity as seen from a possible future scenario.

"Nikolaus Geyrhalter's fantastical HOMO SAPIENS depicts a disquieting scenario whereby the world made by people is slowly won back by nature: it is science fiction and documentary in equal measure, equal parts contemporary and post-apocalyptic."—Berlinale Forum

"Festivals like Berlin help to remind us what pictures can accomplish, whether that means taking an incredibly populist subject and re-contextualizing it for an elite arthouse audience, as Austrian helmer Nikolaus Geyrhalter does by revisiting the now-alien landscapes of abandoned cinemas, shopping malls and sports arenas in HOMO SAPIENS."—Variety

"An aesthetically austere catalog of contemporary ruin. ... Similar in form to the director's previous nonfiction studies (OUR DAILY BREAD, OVER THE YEARS), this wordless assemblage of fixed shots is as much a museum piece as it is a strictly art-house item, inviting viewers to sit back and let the imagery consume them. Far from commercial, it's still a compelling modern study of man vs. nature, with the latter clearly getting the upper hand."—Hollywood Reporter

"Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter's beautifully bleak documentary HOMO SAPIENS is a wordless collection of empty, abandoned, man-made structures (churches, malls, schools, military bases, and nuclear reactors, to name a few). The undoctored subjects, from Fukushima to parts of the U.S., Europe, and South America, reveal a stark landscape of decrepitude slowly being reclaimed by nature's obstinate ability to regenerate itself. If great art takes facts and refracts them into multiple truths, then the Berlinale is host to a myriad of glittering prisms."—Observer

"Nikolaus Geyrhalter's films are also called film poems. He does not go for a quick information round, but chooses a quiet rhythm and a poetic rather than narrative approach that offers space for reflection. ... Thanks to the distant, recording attitude of the director, the scenes have an almost unearthly, weird, abstract beauty."—DOCVILLE Festival, Belgium

2016 Berlinale Forum

2016 Cinema du Reel

2016 Hong Kong International Film Festival

2016 Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival

2016 Docville International Documentary Film Festival

2016 Subversive Film Festival

2016 Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

2016 DOK.fest Munchen

2016 Docs Against Gravity Film Festival

2016 Docaviv International Film Festival

2016 Bildrausch Filmfest Basel

94 minutes / Color
Release: 2016Copyright: 2016

For colleges, universities, government agencies, hospitals and corporations

Purchase DVD: $280.00

This DVD is sold with a license for institutional use and Public Performance rights.

ElsewhereAn epic journey through voices and sounds from elsewhere. Landscapes, outlooks on the world, outlooks on life: Desert, snow, valley, jungle, ice, rainforest. An homage to humanity at the beginning of the 21st Century.